well you might assume you have won because the other guy ran away or something and thus have a handle on what is real only to be hit on the back of the head with a glass ashtray by the same guy 2 weeks later... the other guys fighting strategy was so advanced you thought you had won until he hit you with the delayed death touch.... even if his dim mak was a glass ashtray. you live and learn Boris London
The last couple of times I've been in a confrontation the individual has had a hot drink in their hand. I'm not aware of "iron face" training or "liquid blocking" techniques in any martial art. The real world is very different to anything you could create in MA training.
So unless its a 'till death do us part' scenario, you're always going to get trumped unless you walk around paranoid that others are always trying to get you? I suppose reprisals are always the thing you can never prepare for...and the best 'urban' street fighter is the one with the better tactics than you, physical or not?
Ok folks, lets get back on track here. Couple things: 1. I agree with BKG that there has been way too many homo-erotic cracks. Look folks, there is now a zero tolerance stance on those. There's no need for it and they don't get us anywhere. Don't test me on this one, please. Consider this the only warning. 2. Again, let's keep away from falling back on "the ring" is the only way. The entire point of this thread was to talk about alternates to the "cage." Read the first post if you have questions about that. On Boris's subject of the Glass Ashtray Dim Mak... Here's my stance (for what it's worth), you can't train for everything. And sneak attacks will come in the street. But what resistance training can help you to understand is whether or not after taking a recoverable hit (note the idea of recoverable) whether or not you have it in you to get back up. As important as it is to see if you can apply a technique is also to understand if you have the limits or the internal drive to keep going when you have been pushed past your comfort point. To understand how you process pain. Thoughts? - Matt
So Ikken, (and I guess I'm about to violate my last rule about not bringing up the ring) it's fair to say that your ultimate test of efficacy is going to NEED to be what can be done in the ring because that's what you are training for. Correct? Great contributions by the way! - Matt
thats the problem with violence.. it tends to escalate. even if you finish something with someone your behavior is modified by not knowing that it has ended. walking around paranoid is the result of being trumped or not... and it is deeply deeply damaging to body and soul and is likely to get you into further trouble.. you can think about it all you like but the experience never resolves itself how you imagine it will. full contact match up in some ring sport with a opponent you have never faced or are unaware of his current training regime is enough for a measure of ones own self.. this is the journey of self discovery.. how brave are you? how capable under pressure..how nasty... how honorable.. can one expect to stay on top ones game for ever or even for a few years? Do people lose their bottle over time? what is the limit i can go to before cracking psychologically.. what am I prepared to do.. just learning what the questions are is a result of experience Boris london
Great, great points. So we have both the idea of personal (mental/emotional) and physical (technique execution) efficacy. Have we covered all of the ways to test them? - Matt
i think technically drills can be good or bad but what is more illuminating is drills built from experience or taught by someone with such an experience tend to hold weight with me... chi sao can be thought as live and even resistive at some levels but it must be tempered by a understanding that lies outside it. conversely you can spar full contact which gives you real timing but the restraint of being in a warm blooded situation can often be overlooked as you can apply pressure on your opponent by virtue of being a higher grade student or teacher and the like which distorts how the sparring resolves it self... for instance the incredible speed and viscousness strangers may close down distance in a urge to come to grips with you is not common in sparring .... least those sparring recreate it... the contrived nature of the encounter has limits.. here is the thing. a few fights can create a bed of experience that will multiple the effectiveness of other training even if you never fight again a real scrap will carry over for years Boris london
Without meaning to sound sycophantic Boris, some really good points, and ones that I have personally tried to address in my training in the last year. Just to ease out some personal rubbish, I had a 'fight' with someone a few years back. He came at me with a wooden plank, I hit him first, (chain punch styling) and he went straight down. Result? Unfortunately not. 1) I broke my hand 2) I told the police, they were satisfied enough that I had thumped him, even though I told them what he looked like and what pub he had just entered. 3) Whilst talking to the police, they were talking to us (my brother and friend were involved earlier, and had run, too long to describe why now) outside the pub he had entered. The pub was renowned as a local hole, and the not so nice people were clocking our faces. The result was I didn't walk down one side of my road, and past the pub in fear of a reprisal from a random/friends of the assailant for three months. I had 'beaten' the guy, but I had to hide myself. It wasn't a great situation. 4) As an extra, I really didn't like the feeling when I actually hit him. It didn't physically feel nice, I didn't feel good because I defended myself, just felt a bit bad that I had had to use violence to resolve a situation, and that I had hurt, (perhaps badly) another human being in a mistaken case of drug/alcohol fuelled ego on his part. The only good thing was that I knew that if I had to hit someone I could, and the technique I used could work. that experience will never leave me, and has influenced the way I teach ever since. (Incidentally, also sparring with proffesional kick boxers and getting the wotsit kicked out of me also contributed but thats for another time!!!) I echo Boris' points - all types of sparring has their uses as long as thier limitations are known.
Random thoughts on how to accomplish some of this w/o "direct" resistance training such as sparring: 1. Every now and then while drilling our techniques, Sifu will simply come up behind a student and grab them. A choke, lock, whatever. And Sifu DOES NOT let go. You either tap out or you get out. Period. How is this different from sparring? He's just walking around the room watching us. He's not participating, and we're not sparring. It's the element of surprise. How well do you really know how to escape from a rear choke? You don't until someone walks up behind you and just grabs you. React or tap out. This is very different from sparring. Amazing what instinct can do. 2. We do a lot of conditioning, both physical and mental. Sifu likes to break things up when we're drilling. It doesn't matter what we're doing. Forms, techniques, PT, whatever. He may turn a form session into a sparring session. We'll all go off to our own corners of the floor, mind our own business and do our forms or techniques, and the next thing you know, Sifu is calling out "fight". Stop what you're doing, and go after the nearest person (we have controls here in terms of allowable contact, but that's not the point of the drill). Again, it's all about reaction. You're focusing intently on somethng, and then your concentration is shot and you suddenly find yourself having to just react. And then when the light sparring is done, go right back to where you were in your form. It's a realy good focus drill I've found. Agian, it's the mental part of the game, to be ready for anything. 3. In terms of pushing physical limits. One of our instructors is a Physical Therapist. Do I really need to talk about how we are put through the paces and expected to work through the physical pain? To develop the body's endurance? Some may say that the only way to recover from a hit is to take one, and certainly there is some truth to it. But if the body isn't in shape in the first place, you're in trouble. 4. I can't speak too much about comfort zones, simply because those are terribly personal and I don't want to generalize. But, for example, lately I've been getting pushed out of my past training by having serious restrictions placed on my sparring. For example, one day it's "I can only fight from the outside" to avoid falling back into some bad kickboxing habits. Another day it's "You can't make contact" to work on focus, control, awareness, and reflexes/timing. It may sound odd to some people, especially the "no contact" provision, but it's amazing what goes into actually being able to handle yourself. Any idiot can throw a punch, but part of our training is to learn to react and make sure that punch doesn't do what it's intented to, right?
Interesting way to mix things up. The only question I have is how to do you keep from gouging, throwing or otherwise seriously damaging him? It seems this would only work to a point in that your not going to claw his eyes for the obvious reasons. Say for instance in a choke - seems there are ways you could do real damage to a person... how do you avoid that/resolve that issue? As well - in your art what do you technique do you train to escape a surprise sleeper hold/choke from behind?! (I am sure he doesn't only do chokes -as you've stated... but you get the idea of what i'm gettin' at)
Let's see, from the top: Gouging, at least for most of my classmates isn't an instinct just yet. And for the ones it is, they'll usually go with a throw or escape. If we escape, great, if we throw, that's fine, Sifu doesn't mind, he knows how to fall. And if we do gouge, well, Sifu wears glasses, lol. Seriously, he has no objection to being tossed to the ground if that's is the student's first instinct. If you do that, be prepared to grapple, though, as he is good and won't let go just becuase you're on the floor. You take it to the ground, be prepared to escape or get into a sumbission position. Edit: The other control is time. Sifu won't hold forever. We generally have 5 to 7 seconds to execute the technique, and that's whether we're with Sifu or any other partner. If you can't break in that short amount of time, opponent lets go. If the student being grabbed is uncomfortable or panics, tap out. That sounds like a cop out, but it's the truth. Use it as a learning experience and work harder. Sifu is pretty god at judging the reactions of students, so we'll get pushed, but not so much that we get hurt. Does that make sense or do you need me to explain it more? I'm trying to write down something I think about in a split second and may not be doing a great job of it, apologies in advance. When students apply chokes or locks or grabs to each other, we're expected to go hard, but not too hard. Only instructors will apply these very hard; the rest of us go about 50-60%, I'd say. Enough to make our opponent work, not so hard that they will get hurt. We've had a few bloody noses, black eyes, and ripped uniforms, but the trade-off, actually working the techniques instead of the doing the "slow motion punch here's an arm coming oh no whatever do I do" method of training is worth every bruise. We use a lot of control. Again, can explain more if that's too obvious an answer. We're rough, but not careless. Accidents happen, as I mentioned in my other thread, but we seem to do well enough. As for our escape from a rear choke, I'm talking about a standing situation, so I'll continue with that example. Sifu comes up and chokes from behind. Ideally, shift your head toward your opponent's body a bit to keep the airway open, use one arm to hold the seizing arm, use the other hand to hit meridians, release the hold. That's ideal. The realistic? Twist your head, try for the nerves, if that doesn't work immediately (which it so rarely does on Sifu), go for the wrist, fingers, or triceps with single-knuckle strikes or eagle claws (or outmuscle if possible). Get the hold loosened enough to either escape/move away or shift and get the better position, going to the ground if necessary. That's the basic escape. There are upper level techniques I simply haven't learned yet. But the basics are good.
From the grappling faq: We apologize for the interruption and return you to your regularly scheduled kung fu, already in progress.
BKG, Great post and way to document you schools training. One point and one question. On the issue of chokes, just to carify, the first level of protective response should be blood supply and not breathing (as crazy as that might sound). Blood chokes set in far faster than breath chokes. This is more an fyi. On a second point, with the eye attacks (and your instructor's glasses), in a choke situation how does your instructor react to your finding his eyes with your fingers? Is that an automatic release? - Matt
yes. if what we are doing is not in some way applicable to the ring theres no reason to do it, which is why theres no groundwork, multiple opponent training, etc. I can explain some of the other things we do apart from padwork/sparring/bagwork though if you like?
Yes. We don't want to hurt each other. If there is a clear "threat" such as finding eyes, a throw or reversal about to go awry, or something that will put himself or another student at risk, it's an immediate release. If we did something right, we'll be told, and if we did something incorrectly, we'll be shown how to fix it.
One more question then BKG, in the case of a defense against the choke, would your instructor consider intentionally "finding the eyes" a correct response? - Matt
I think he would, yes. Of course with the admonition that an experienced fighter might not break, it may need to be really hard or follwoed by something else, etc. But yeah, that would be considered correct.
